I'm getting this weird problem that comes and goes, but more often than not when I try to burn a CD with this TDK media I bought (CMC type) it sometimes just sits forever in the "Lead-in" writing phase in Nero or the "calibrating power" in burnatonce. The writer makes spinning up noise for a few moments then it spins down and starts over again, and keeps repeating forever and can't be aborted usually by software (requires a hard reboot to get the writer to stop). Happens with both Nero 5 and 6, as well as both SPTI and ASPI in burnatonce. Seems to happen with both data cd's as well as audio, and CD writing speed doesn't seem to make any appreciable difference.

This is kinda driving me nuts... I was worried that I flashed my CD-RW improperly and so tried a few different versions (1.0F, 1.0G, and finally back to 1.0K) and no change. Then I tried changing IDE drivers to an older VIA 4-in-1, and back up to the latest one. Nothing seems to make a difference.

Is this a media compatibility problem, or is my drive's hardware borked (ie. should I figure out how to RMA it) ?